Breaking Into Insanity
by crypticnotions
Summary: A Reaver recounts his descent into insanity.


Title: Breaking Into Insanity  
  
Author: crypticnotions  
  
Rating: Pg-13....violence.  
  
Disclaimer: I would love to say I created Firefly or own a piece of it, but that credit goes to Joss Whedon and belongs to him and all appropriate companies.   
  
Summary: A reaver recounts his descent into insanity.   
  
A/N: This falls into the theory that the blue hand men have something to do with the creation of Reavers. Don't know if it's true, but as far as I can tell, there's no solid background on where they came from or how they came to be. I'm also not sure how long they've supposed to be around. I think it's been mentioned in the show, not sure. Anyway, I made their creation close to the beginning of "Serenity".  
  
Also, I don't have grammar check and no one is checking my work, so please forgive any grammar problems. This is my first Firefly fic so bear with me.   
  
*****  
  
I grew up in Persephone. A quaint little place buzzing with life. Now, I live among savages who thrive on death.   
  
My childhood was pretty uneventful. It didn't become complicated until my teen years. I lost my father and two brothers in the war. My father was old fashioned and wanted to be independent. My brothers were for unification. They never reconciled before they were annihilated.   
  
My mother always said that the war wasn't so much for unification, but for who could control the planets. That was really the deal with earth-that-was. Too many people struggling for control and using up her resources, but no one giving back to her. You can only take for so long without giving back.   
  
Word of Nigel's death came on my fifteenth birthday. I was almost a man, yet all the men in my life were gone. That encouraged my mother to enroll me into the Blue Sun program. I was an intelligent child, but I was still not smart enough to get into the acclaimed academy. The Blue Sun program was all that was left.   
  
I had always had a love for education so I jumped at the chance as much as my mother.   
  
I wasn't eligible to start the program until I was eighteen. For three years I was fed propaganda for a company that I would later discover didn't exist. At least it didn't exist in the way they claimed it did. But at the time, I was naive and giddy and I missed my father and brothers. I needed something to delve into, to occupy my mind from the grief. I had been the strong one. When my mother cried at night, I was tearless. When she whispered their names, I didn't utter a word. When she rocked herself to sleep, I refused to be restless.   
  
Finally, I turned eighteen. And soon I was boarding the ship to go to the Blue Sun Center For Education or the BSCFE as it was commonly called.   
  
I can still remember that day. My mother stood on the docks, waving and smiling. I think I took her dreams for my whole family with me. I had never seen her as happy as she was then. She had this look on her face that took away all the sadness of the past years. When the madness hits the hardest and I struggle to grasp any recollection of my humanity, it's always the look on her face at that moment that brings me from the brink.   
  
I didn't learn that Blue Sun was really a government run company for an entire year. In other words, it was a fraud. Except it didn't extort money, it extorted people's lives. When I found out, it was entirely too late to reverse the process. I was already starting to become warped.   
  
During that first year, we went to a building where we were basically told how to eat, sleep, and breath. Some people would compare it to the military, but it was far worse. It was more like Big Brother from George Orwell's 1984. They had us read that book. I think it was an effort to subtly let us know we were never alone. Or maybe it was because they were trying to have an utopia like the one in the book. Of course, we never read the whole book, but we did read all of the Big Brother parts. It was confusing reading only paragraphs of a book and being told what we didn't read. I'm sure they made a good deal of it up. I'm not entirely sure it was even a part of his book, but they said it was.   
  
But it wasn't so much the watching as it was the evading. You can be watched and never have your life snatched from you. Granted, it's not comfortable to be viewed all the time, but it's livable.   
  
They didn't actually let us know we were nothing more than an experiment until the second year. By that time, most, if not all communication with anyone outside of the center was cut off. Even if I had reached my mother, I'm not sure she could have done more than get herself killed. It was no hidden fact that several people that were contacted close to the beginning of the second year mysteriously disappeared.   
  
One day they decided that it was time to take us for a "field trip". If we had known exactly what that meant, we probably would have opted for suicide. I had no clue that when I packed my bags I would never come back.   
  
I can't say for sure where they took us. For all I know, we could have been at the same center or on an entirely different moon or planet. I never found out nor did I try. I should have. I might have escaped.   
  
It was experiment after experiment. No one knew what all the tests were for. My body was so sore and they afforded us no time for rest. They assured us we didn't need so much sleep, but being deprived of sleep is one of the most agonizing forms of torture. It broke everyone's spirits and several people died from the sheer lack of rest. It also kept anyone from rebelling. You can't rebel when you can't keep your eyes open or even piece together coherent thoughts.   
  
I don't think it was until we learned that we were going into the black that we got excited. We didn't know that they had tried changing our DNA and realized that they'd failed and we would soon go mad.   
  
They packed us up nice and cozy on a beautiful ship named Pandora. She was so sleek and tidy. My mate, Cody, kept rambling about how great the stars would be. We hadn't really spent much time studying the stars and there wasn't anyone on board who wasn't happy to get the opportunity.   
  
For the next year we traveled around. We even stopped a few places the first few months. We never realized the course of the ship was taking us further away from civilization. We slowly began to become more agitated in general.   
  
The first time I knew something was wrong, we were on a planet far from the central planets and just relaxing. It wasn't comfortably terraformed yet, but it had some wildlife and a few settler families. I was coming from a refreshing little run through a creek when I heard a shriek.   
  
I ran through the forest to fine Cody with his hands bloodied, his mouth wet with blood and the remains of one of the settler children. I was horrified, but not because he had killed the child, but because I had felt indifferent. I was a humanitarian, and there I was not caring that an innocent child had been gutted and stripped of his skin.   
  
When we got back to the ship, Cody apologized, but we both knew something was going on with us. By this time, it was general knowledge that people were becoming more vicious.   
  
Soon, we didn't stop anymore. Later, we ran out of protein packs. And then. And then we ran across a ship that was in distress. It was unlikely to find someone so far out in the black, but we went to help them. Or so we told ourselves. I think even then we knew what we were going to do to those poor people.   
  
It didn't really hit me until I was staring down at a man I had plunged my hand into and pulled out his organs. It was a savage response. Even as I swallowed my findings and touched the cold skin-as if playing with it-I didn't feel the burn of power coursing through me.   
  
It wasn't until I looked up and saw the litter of bodies scattered around that I realized what I had become. I wept for a long time after that. I hated Blue Sun, I hated my brothers, I even hated my mother, but I hated myself the most. I felt as if my lack of restraint had made me into what I was.   
  
Even when we were finally told what had been done to us, I still felt guilty. Lots of people have been exposed to unlikely environments and not let themselves get caught up in the violence of it all. That was what scared me the most. I knew what they did to me made me violent, but it was the fact that I loved the violence that got to me. Much like the Bible mama used to read me, I was a lover of evil.   
  
It's when you realize that you love the hideous things that you're doing that you become insane. Every time I go in for a kill, I feel a rush. All the things bad in my life flash through my brain and flow into my body and I feel justified and when I look at my destroyed victim, I feel an unexplainable happiness. A happiness that courses through my veins from head to toe. The metallic taste of blood, the screams, all of it goes into my brain and I try to think of even worse things to do to the next victim.   
  
I've longed stopped caring about who I kill. And I've longed stopped caring about my soul, but I do still care about my humanity.   
  
I know people think that reavers are completely insane-I've hear it yelled when we are on the prowl-but they're wrong. It is a time after the kill-whether from some DNA changes or just the adrenaline high-when sanity comes back. It's for a very short time, but it comes back clear and shiny. It haunts us like we haunt our victims.   
  
The old saying from earth-that-was about not knowing what you've got until it's gone is true. I never realized how much I would miss my humanity until it was stripped from me and I was left breaking into insanity. 


End file.
